Someone pulling a fast one?

mayhem#

All,

I received an e-mail today supposedly coming from "Eircom net residential credit control".
Following is the text of the e-mail:

TERMINATION OF EIRCOM NET SUBSCRIPTION ACCOUNT IN 3 DAYS IF PAYMENT IS NOT RECIEVED

*** IMPORTANT : Please do not reply to this email. To contact us please phone 01 - 604 6970 ***

Dear *********
Account Number : ********

We have already attempted to contact you by post. However, our records show that the balance on your subscription account remains overdue and in arrears by EUR 551.57

Your eircom net subscription service provides you with:
- high quality access to the internet together with
- low cost connection charges
- low cost telephone support that is available seven days a week.

---

Unless full payment is received within three days from the date of this email your internet account will be terminated. This means that you will lose your email address and all benefits of the subscription service as outlined above.

---

Payment can be made by any one of the following methods:
- To clear your balance immediately call 01- 604 6970 with your credit card details.
- Cheque : please ensure you put your ACCOUNT NUMBER : 200086604 on the reverse of your cheque before posting it to : PO BOX 1, Ennis, Co. Clare.

You must ensure you give your customer number in all correspondence. We cannot be held responsible for disconnection where payments cannot be allocated to the correct account.

*** IMPORTANT : Please do not reply to this email. ***

Should you have any query please contact us by phone on 01 - 604 6970.

Please note that recent charges and payments may not be reflected in the balance given above. If you have recently settled this balance you may disregard this email.

Kind regards,
Residential Credit Control Department
eircom net

Now this smells seriuosly fishy to me for the following reasons:

1) I have not been using an Eircom subscription account for over 4 years.
2) Why am I not supposed to reply to this e-mail?
3) Why do I send payment to a PO box in Ennis?
4) How come I am supposed to pay within 3 days of the date on the e-mail (January 23rd) even though I did not receive until today (January 26th)?

This just looks to me like a very elaborate scam...
Anyone else received an e-mail like this?

Mayhem.

yankinlk

very dodgy looking. was there a return email address? have a look at the headers as well. Im not asking you to post that info here, but was it an obviously fake email address?

jd

The telephone numbers are genuine(rang it only open business hours)), and po box 1 in Ennis is Eircoms
billing Centre..

--

yankinlk

rang the number out of pure curiosity...got a voice on a machine ( but it is saturday) and it sounded very very legit.

Id say someone at eircom has decided to go through the old books and settle up all those old accounts.

A phone call should sort it out. I think I will be getting the same type of letter from esat one of these days as they have been sending me bills that i just ignore (i dont even have a landline anymore, chorus phone).

Hobbes

Eircom have their accounts system fuked up beyond belief,

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=38361

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=35752



At this stage I'd start getting a list of people they are intimidating and do up a complaint.

GoneShootin

the number and address are indeed legit.

but the body of the email itself, its tone, I find it amazing that eircom would send such a thing. its more sounds more suspictious than a legit contact from eircom

Fidelis

Do you guys actually know for certain that that telephone number is legit ? Have any of you ever phoned it before ? Have you ever seen it in the phone book etc ?

Just because you dial the number and you get a voicemail hardly justifies it to be 'legit'.

That e-mail is extremely dodgy looking, in my opinion. Pay to a PO BOX ? Don't reply to e-mail ?

You've blanked out your acc. details in your post, have you checked to see if it corralates with a phone bill acc. number ?

mayhem#

Originally posted by Fidelis
You've blanked out your acc. details in your post, have you checked to see if it corralates with a phone bill acc. number ?

It doesn't but then again it shouldn't as I ahve moved 6 ties since I last used an Eircom subscription account. However I called Eircom billing (1901) who said that it did not look like an Eircom account number to them.....

jd

Originally posted by mayhem#


It doesn't but then again it shouldn't as I ahve moved 6 ties since I last used an Eircom subscription account. However I called Eircom billing (1901) who said that it did not look like an Eircom account number to them.....

It's not an account number from the system used for normal telephone calls-
I think they use the system for billing leased line customers etc
jd

strat

iu work for an ISP and theres ALWAYS loads of scams like this

sad thing is ppl do actually fall for it

GoneShootin

which ISP

rymus

I know a guy who's been getting the very same bills for about 3 years and hasnt paid one of them. He owes a substantial amount of money which he doesnt intend on paying any time in the near future.

Anyway, rang credit control and after being on hold for 20+ minutes I finally got to the bottom of it.. his account is still active even though so many unpaid bills have piled up. Long story short - Eircom will swindle anyone anytime they see the opportunity... (But everyone knew that already)

And yes I was very suprised to see an eircom net subscription bill.. havent seen one of those in quite some time (or havent seen someone who was willing to pay £12 a month to use a 'special' 1891 dialup)

walt

Heh, I've been getting billed every month for the last 2 years for my eircom account, which I tried cancelling several times but to no avail...

Blitzkrieger

Originally posted by mayhem#

Your eircom net subscription service provides you with:
- high quality access to the internet together with
- low cost connection charges
- low cost telephone support that is available seven days a week.

R.O.F.L.

Lies! It's all lies!

gandalf

Yep this is not new. Ignore them unless you originally paid by direct debit on CC or Bank Account.

If you did pay by those methods you could get a nasty surprise like I did on your balance. After a couple of days talking to various people in their accounts I sorted that.

2 things are apparent:

1. It is a complete mess and they do not have a clue what they are doing.

2. You need to scream at them to sort it out.

Gandalf.